


Incomprehensible

by synonym



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 15:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10126571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synonym/pseuds/synonym
Summary: Norma cuts her palm in the kitchen. She reflects on her past, her future, and everything that is incomprehensibly him.





	

She remembers the blood on her lips. It's a strange semblance of the memory but the most detailed depiction of it, the dampness of the metallic tasting liquid, heavier than water, it paints against her skin as it falls to her arm. Red on porcelain, red on floral fabric.

She wonders if it ever changes, if that once you are born, you are doomed to the existence of its choosing, that horror follows the damned and that was set in stone since her first cry into the burning, artificial air of hospital oxygen. 

He hits her again, and the porcelain becomes much more red, the floral disappearing into the solidity of one colour. 

She thinks about saying something. She sees Dylan, peeking from the door, the warm light of the lamp makes his cheeks glisten. He is so small, she wishes she could look at him without wanting to vomit, she wishes she could have known the inevitability of all of this. 

Norman starts to cry.

The cycle of his arm, the swing of his metaphorical hammer, seems to be broken in the wailing of his son. They sit on the floor, he sits and she rather lays with her hands cradling her head, in a moment of silence. His breathing is loud, his breath is laced in scotch.

God, how she hates the smell of scotch. 

It is her moment to escape, she finds the strength to pull herself up from the pile in the floor, snatching the baby monitor off the dresser. She remembers how blood fell like raindrops off her chin, she doesn't remember any pain or where it was coming from. 

Dylan tries to grab her hand, but she cannot focus on anything but the thud of her pulse. She pushes past him without looking at his face, it kills her when she looks him in the eyes and she hates herself little more when she does than when she doesn't, so she falls into the pattern of avoiding her own child's gaze. Life is shitty like that, she tells herself, and it helps but not by much. 

She is remembering this when she cuts her hand, it hits her all at once. She is making supper, she can hear Alex in the living room, the blood drips on her floral dress. It makes the shape of something that looks abstractly like a upside down tulip and it makes her feel guilty, because the echo of the cry resonates in her, and Norman is locked away (It is good for him there, she knows it is, but she feels like she has yet again failed in another aspect in her life she tried to keep hopelessly together, she ruined both of her children and she hates that more than anything, because she told herself they would have a different childhood than her own, that they wouldn't end up broken like her, a futile dream for the damned it seems) and she can’t answer his cries any longer.

She wants to call out to Alex, she loves his attention, his concern, she loves the way he gravitates around her like she is the sun and she is terrified of him being pulled out of her orbit. He would come running, as he always did, and she finds that so incomprehensible that it awes her. 

She never had a person come running before. She had always been running to them.

She stands there, instead, looking the constant drip from her palm, her breathing feels rapid. Quiet, but rapid, and she sets the knife down on the cutting board. 

'Alex,' What can she say? She is too far gone in her adoration of the man to waste the opportunity, 'Can you get me the first aid kit?'

'Why? What happened?'

'It's nothing, really, just a...'

He is there before she can finish her sentence, the words dying on her lips as she watches his facial muscles contort, analyzing the situation, the way his eyes shine in their concern, the press of his lips, the dip of his eyebrows when his vision falls on the mess she has made, she wonders what he is thinking because she doesn't understand him. She understands cruelty, she can comprehend selfishness, it has been a goddamn dog eat dog world for her since she was the mere age of four years old. He was antithesis of everything she ever knew and at first she wanted to push it away like the plague. It frustrated her, his constant push for her trust and honesty, like an annoying buzzing noise of decency flying around her at a rapid rate and slamming (gently, ironically enough) her up against doors and demanding her truth with soulful eyes. 

She still couldn't comprehend it, she loves it with every part of her being now, his soft decency, the stoic and calm hum he seems to radiate, his desperate desire for the truth. 

His desperate desire for her. Not in that way, in a way that no man had ever offered her, in a heart wrenching selfless way, where he would rather throw himself into harm's way than to let her get a mere paper cut. It puzzling and wonderful, and she wants to live in every second of every day, there is no logic in that, but the calm disappears when he goes, and she wishes could simply sew herself to him. She bets that he would let her and she can't seem to move past how wonderfully intoxicating the thought is. 

'Shit,' She doesn't often hear him swear and she decides she likes it. He has such a soft voice, steady, as if he was humming but humming words and they make sentences and she feels like sometimes it doesn't make sense but it is so distinctly him that she can't get enough of his voice. He takes her hand, pulling it gently in the direction of the sink and the water hits her hand, it is like ice and it stings slightly, and it seems to snap her out of her revery. 

'I guess I just wasn't paying attention,' She offers, 'It's fine, Alex, really, I probably just need a bandaid or something,'

'No, this is going to need to be wrapped up,'

'Really?' She raises her left eyebrow, 'Don't you think that's a bit dramatic? I didn't get attacked,'

She says it with sarcasm but he isn't listening. His thumbs pressing, kneading the opening of skin the cut had created, pulling a piece of paper towel off the roll, and shaking her hand slightly before pushing it down with a consistent pressure on her palm. 

She touches his hairline with her uninjured hand, trailing her fingers down to the base of his jaw. He still isn't paying attention, folding the paper towel to make the closest thing to a temporary bandage, and it frustrates her because it doesn't hurt, but it matters so much to him that he seems lost in the task. 

He looks up when he is satisfied with his work, in the dimmed light of the kitchen, his eyes look like honey, liquid gold, and she wants to drown in them. 

'Are you okay?'

She hadn't not been okay, but he looks so pained, it is a simple cut and looking at him one would think it had been a shot to the chest, and she can't help but let her thumb trace his eyebrow. 

'Yes, Alex,' She loves his name, 'Yes, I'm okay. I'm fine,'

'Okay, let me get the first aid kit, hold this,' He passes his handiwork to her, which is her own hand, and as he moves past her, he presses his mouth to the side of her head, 'Just hold on,'

'What else am I going to do?' She retorts loudly, 'Unless you want me to bleed on the cucumbers,'

She hears him shuffling and an inaudible reply. She taps her foot in restlessness. 

'Here we go,' He struts in with the white little box in hand, 'Have a seat,' He motions to the kitchen chair.

'Okay, Dr. Romero, what's your diagnosis?' 

He smiles, she could never get enough of that boyish smile, 'A symptom of kitchen clumsiness, I'm afraid. Incurable,'

'Well shit, I guess you're gonna have to do the cooking from now on, big shot,'

'Prepare for a life for burnt eggs and frozen pizzas, baby,'

She laughs because he is doing that ridiculous expression with his face and she can't believe that she once thought he was a boring man. That is unimaginable now. 

He takes her hand, gently, from her own uninjured one, and beginning wrapping it in the small roll of medical gauze he removed from the kit. 

'Alex,'

He looks at her. She is looking at him. She wants to tell him so many things. He knows about Caleb now, he knows the truth about Norman, he knows so much and for the first time, she wants him to know so much more. She wants to share details of things that she has never shared with anyone, that she has kept locked up inside herself that ate away at her in a constant, damning sense. 

The memory she had recalled just moments ago seems a million miles away in this moment, like an entirely different life. She looks down, briefly, and the blood stain just looks like a simple accident in the kitchen and relief floods through her body. 

'Do you like scotch?' 

'What?' He finishes up his work with a piece of tape, there is a warmth in his curiosity, 'No, not really... Why?'

She leans over the table, pressing her mouth against his. His hand finds the back of her head, the other protecting her balance by holding her hip, and the rest of existence, the horrors of her past, her fears of the future, seem to melt away into him. She tells herself that she will tell him, some other day, as right now he is reminding her that she has an incalculable amount of them ahead of her. It does change, it seems, even for the damned, and before her was living, breathing proof.


End file.
